ArcMap 10.4.1 Freezes in Windows 10

[RobertBradley1]

Anybody else having issues with using ArcMap 10.4.1 with a Windows 10 computer? Used ArcMap 10.4.1 with no problems on a computer with Windows 7, but after moving to a new computer with Windows 10 ArcMap started freezing up and becoming unresponsive.  

There doesn't seem to be any pattern or certain tool or process being used when this happens. And it seems to happen even when in the middle of doing something and not just when idle.

First the table of contents will start to flash in and out, and then it just disappears. If you start clicking on in the table of contents when it is flashing in and out, sometimes it stops and you are good. If you don't catch it before it disappears, ArcMap becomes completely non-responsive and you have to use task manager to close it.  

I have mentioned this to ESRI support and they said they weren't sure what is causing this and had me do the typical steps of renaming the folder in app data, etc. But the problem still happens. They then said something about Microsoft Group Policy update checks causing this but offered no solution expect to turn off group policy update checks. Which is something our staff (as with most of you) cant do. 

This issue has caused many hours of lost work and time!! Come on ESRI fix this problem or get Microsoft to!

[Anonymous User]

I am having the same systemic failure with an ArcPro local scene. 5 days of work and now the freeze occurs as I try to remove transitory products. 

[RobertBradley1]

Thanks Tim, and sorry to hear we are not alone. Our issues also appear to be intermittent and don't effect all of our users. Hopefully ESRI gets this figured out before we have to upgrade all of our users to Windows 10.

[MikeSmith13]

We are seeing this issue even in ArcMap 10.2.1 on Windows 10. It is a problem with the integration between Arc and Windows 10. ESRI please get together with Microsoft and figure this out.  Reading here it has to do with the Microsoft Group Policy update checks. Why would that only affect Arc and only affect the Table of Contents? I'm not a programmer, but there's a path to check.

[mikepoulos]

After living with the freezing and flashing problem for months, this thread pointed me in the right direction to solving the problem, but it requires admin rights. What worked for me was enabling 'Turn off background refresh of group policy' in gpedit.msc which prevents group policy updates while the computer is in use. I posted more detailed instructions on stack exchange at: arcgis 10.5 - Arcmap table of contents flashes and system becomes unresponsive episodically on windo... 

[TimThayer]

Update: it appears that our solution to the problem might be to upgrade to ArcMap 10.6.1.  Our IT department adamantly refused to allow us to change the group policy settings, so at the suggestion of Esri tech support, we upgraded our two most affected users (who were getting 5-6 crashes a day) to 10.6.1.  They still see the flashing TOC when the group policy update runs, but they've had zero crashes/freezes since the update.  Since we jumped over several versions (10.4.1 to 10.6.1), I'm not sure at what version the crashing/freezing problem was fixed.  Looking through the "Issues Addressed" list for each version, I thought it might be this fix listed for ArcMap 10.5.1:

BUG-000101623 ArcMap crashes after one to two hours when running on Windows 10 with certain layer configurations.

Although it doesn't specifically mention the group policy, it does mention Windows 10, and the default group policy update runs every 90 minutes +/- 30 minutes (i.e. every one to two hours).  However, it sounds like at least one user on this thread was still seeing the crashing problem at 10.5.1, so I'm not sure this is it.

[ScottHumphrey]

Trying to un-check features. Software locks up for up to 90 seconds with each feature disabled. 

[PatrikHallberg]

Have the same problem with win 10, tried to upgrade to 10.7 still same problem.

SOLUTION:

If I kill the process for explorer.exe (windows), then my Arcgis starts responding again. After that you can restart explorer.exe again.

If no explorer.exe session is started, it also works by starting explorer and then restart it in processes.